


clasped

by twofrontteethstillcrooked



Series: A certain knot of peace [3]
Category: Black Sails
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Canon Era, M/M, Tiptoeing toward silverflinthamilton, Treasure Island who?, snippetfic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-30
Updated: 2017-12-30
Packaged: 2019-02-23 16:55:21
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,105
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13194486
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/twofrontteethstillcrooked/pseuds/twofrontteethstillcrooked
Summary: As Silver picked his way nearer, Thomas glanced over. "Though I am happy to say this coat has proved more efficient than expected. You, on the other hand, look miserable.""No such flattery for me, thanks," Silver said, taking a seat next to him on the rock with a little effort. "How could I be desolate, when so much of my body has gone numb. But, fortunately, I've only the one foot to lose to frostbite."The way he always did when he was amused and trying not to appear so, Thomas looked down with a small smile. The sight of it twisted warm and uninvited through Silver.To change the subject, at least in his mind, Silver said, "What's that you have there?"Continuing the little universe ofA certain knot of peaceandcoiled.





	clasped

**Author's Note:**

> I'd like to thank climate change and the freakish arctic weather so much of North America is currently experiencing for the inspiration that led to this snippetfic. ;)
> 
> eta 12 Feb. 2018, because probably Silver didn't invent mass produced matches 100+ years early (cough)

In one regard, it seemed logical to Silver that Thomas Hamilton stayed outdoors with a frequency bordering on obsession. Someone who had been confined not merely to four narrowly set walls and a roof but to a variety of prison cells might take extra pleasure from boundaries created only by copses of alder and oak and a ceiling of low cloud. Even in dreams Thomas was likely to make his way outside; shutters were opened so often Silver was surprised thrushes and warblers had not mistaken the space Thomas and Flint shared for a rather roomier than normal birdhouse. 

In another way, Silver, observing Thomas from a distance, thought Thomas might harbor some mental affliction. Well, who amongst them didn't? Perhaps there were those who slept without horrors and fought no demons in daylight, and Silver would be glad to hear of it. He himself felt the breadth of his own deeds press down on him occasionally, like a boulder that could not be budged by any mortal labor. Thomas, though possessing fewer sins to confess, carried troubles of his own, and sometimes the strain showed more plainly than at other times.

No thoroughly sane man would be sitting atop a rock during a sleet storm.

Silver knew he wasn't sneaking up on Thomas, wouldn't have been able to even if that had been the intent. He still felt odd about drawing closer without saying something, in case the ice falling from the sky was masking any sound his approach might make.

"A mild evening," he called out, his voice booming and rough.

Thomas did not twitch. As suspected, he had heard Silver's arrival. "More humid than I like." He did look up, as if slightly surprised by the sleet, and moved over on the large rock marking one corner of yard at the edge of Madi's garden. As Silver picked his way nearer, Thomas glanced over. "Though I am happy to say this coat has proved more efficient than expected. You, on the other hand, look miserable."

"No such flattery for me, thanks," Silver said, taking a seat next to him on the rock with a little effort. "How could I be desolate, when so much of my body has gone numb. But, fortunately, I've only the one foot to lose to frostbite."

The way he always did when he was amused and trying not to appear so, Thomas looked down with a small smile. The sight of it twisted warm and uninvited through Silver. 

To change the subject, at least in his mind, Silver said, "What's that you have there?" 

Thomas opened his hand. In his right palm laid a woman's brooch, a bow-shaped piece of dingy gold that must have once been set with gemstones. The jewels had all been pried loose. At the tips of the pin were a few remaining specks of lapis-hued enamel.

Silver looked at it. The sleet had almost stopped and he felt colder than ever.

"Miranda's? How could you have possibly--" He cut himself off, seeing Thomas flinch and then pretend to have not flinched.

"I hid it," Thomas said softly. "It was. She'd been wearing it the evening before." He cleared his throat. "And the clasp had broken, see?" He turned it over. "I picked it up and put it in my coat pocket, meaning to return it to her vanity when we were home, and I'd forgotten. They took me the next day and I spent ten years squirreling it around, thinking of what I'd say when I handed it to her." He turned it back over to run a thumb over the prongs. "It was a job to keep them from finding it. It had been set with amethysts, emeralds, black pearls -- I believe it had been in Miranda's family a while, of no particular sentimental value, though she liked it a good deal." Thomas looked at Silver and then away. "The gold is not of high quality. The stones proved useful, to a very limited degree."

"And the pin?"

Thomas gave a snort. "Sharp, though as you note not large enough to qualify as a proper dagger. I did entertain the notion of stabbing one person in the eye with it."

"What stayed your hand?"

"That was when I was first in Savannah. I chose instead to use a steel trowel."

Silver didn't whistle at that, but very much wanted to. "Did he lose the eye?"

"Lord, I hope so," Thomas said. "Never saw him afterward. Heard he was relocated." Any mirth left him as he stared down at the brooch. "We had not been married a year when Miranda told me she'd never known a man to strike so rarely with his fists but so accurately with his words. I was as proud of that as anything she ever said of me."

Silver took as inconspicuous a breath as he could. "I wager she'd have been proud of you always, regardless of whatever you might have done to survive."

"You didn't know her." Thomas said it without accusation.

"No, but. I know Flint, and you, a bit." Silver swallowed. "I don't imagine you were incorrect in your estimation of her. You knew her worth, and she knew yours." He pictured Madi, for some reason, when saying it, and missed her badly enough for a trice to be taken aback by it.

The sleet decided to intensify. Thomas closed his hand around the brooch.

He looked... Lost, Silver thought. He felt curiously awful about it. "Let's go inside," he suggested and was glad Thomas was quick to stand up.

Silver had his key out; they entered his side of the house, Thomas stomping on the back step to knock ice pellets off his boots and Silver using his crutch to do the same to his single boot. There was some grappling in the doorway, neither wanting to track anything wet into the kitchen. In sock feet they set about warming up the room, Thomas collecting candlesticks while Silver fed a new log to the grate and found the firesteel. The room was filled with golden light and the scent of burning hickory in no time.

Flint wasn't running late, per se, but both Silver and Thomas seemed to feel his absence simultaneously. The day's work also caught up with Silver. His back and shoulders were sore, and his hands red from hot water and cold weather. He pulled two wooden chairs to the fire and plunked himself down in one. Thomas arrived with mugs of wine. 

"I didn't know I had wine?" Silver said.

"You didn't, Flint stashed a jug over here."

Silver gave him some side eye as he sat. "Why?"

"Pretty sure he stole your jug of scotch last week."

"He drank a whole jug of scotch last week?"

"Oh, no. It's sitting on our counter as we speak." Thomas sipped his wine like the conversation made perfect sense. 

They watched the fire in a manner almost companionable for a few minutes. 

"I wasn't." Thomas sighed. "Being maudlin at random." 

Silver waited.

"It was her birthday, today." 

Thomas smoothed a hand down his shirt front, as if she were watching from across the room and judging his current rumpled state. He was a tidy enough person, with short hair and a short beard and a fondness for shirts with billowy sleeves, though Silver assumed once upon a time he and Miranda had been the most opulent couple in any given room, precious jewels nestled together in splendid velvets and finery. 

"Did she like birthdays?" Silver asked, guessing it was a safe enough inquiry.

"No." Thomas smiled. "She liked cake, laughter, and sunshine. One of those things, she used to say, was difficult to come by in wintertime, and the other two would have to work especially hard to overcome the shortfall." He stared into the flames with shining eyes and his fingers gripping the mug like a drowning man might seize a rope. "I don't suppose he's told you the whole story," he said. He blinked before looking at Silver. "About how she died. The. Specific circumstances, I mean."

Silver clutched his own mug for moral support. "Flint hasn't-- I wasn't there," he said, hating the resignation and grief in Thomas's face. "I was on the ship. Everything that happened in Charles Town itself I know only second hand. Or even third or fourth hand." 

Vane; the girl; the gold, the lie, the vote; the city burning. My leg, he thought, and then refused to think about it further.

"He never told you--"

"Not explicitly, no, I'm sorry. You've asked him?"

"Not. Perhaps not, as you say, explicitly." Thomas sat his mug on the floor, like the temptation to hurl it somewhere was weighing on him.

"I can't think he'd refuse to tell you. Or refuse you anything, honestly."

"I'm being foolish not asking him, just. I thought he might come around to it, eventually, on his own."

Silver had no answer for that -- he refrained from listing all the times Captain Flint had withheld crucial information from his crews -- nor, he knew, could he throw any stones over someone's reluctance to divulge the past. He sat his mug on the floor too and flexed his hands. He sincerely entertained the thought of stealing back his jug of scotch, or breaking into song just to crack the sadness now heavy in the air. 

Thomas was watching the fire, something unguarded in his face that made Silver's chest ache. He imagined himself curling an arm around Thomas's waist, slowly, giving him enough time to pull away if he needed to.

No, no, no, he told himself. Cease considering this idea.

He made a decision. "Many years ago, when barely taller than an apple cart, I was leaning against the sun-warmed brick of a chandler's establishment one afternoon, enjoying a rare air and a fresh piece of fruit, and in all ways minding my own business, when who interrupted my meditations but an ill-tempered passerby, an old, old woman, tiny, wrapped in a shawl of tatters." 

He had managed the right tone: Thomas perked up with interest, the way the crew used to when Silver began to tell them a tale.

He continued, "She had crone fingernails and long, unkempt white locks, and she stepped right up to me as though we were kin and she had some claim on my person. Ranted, she did, about the hideousness of life, the wages of sin, scoundrels in power who were tracking her every move and hearing her every wicked thought -- like her daily routine was of any importance to the crown or gentry -- and as she spoke her head whipped to and fro, as though maneuvered by an invisible hand hovering far above us."

Thomas turned in the chair, tucked a foot under one leg and settled in to listen. Silver tried not to preen under the attention.

"I was," he said, "I must admit, a callow youth, quick to chuckle at her lunacy, and I meant to hurry away to the safety of some other nook further down the street, but as I attempted to circumvent her, she shot out her hand and with those claws raking my wrist she held tight as if to break the bone in her grip. With her other hand she pulled my face so close to hers I could count the hairs on her chin, and when she spoke, it was with a clarity previously inconceivable in one whose thoughts and speech were as twisted as hers.

"She said, 'The terrible thing comes for us all, child. One day someone you love will perish from this earth, and ye shall be cursed to live without them for the rest of your numbered days.'" His voice wavered a little. "I struggled to escape without success, wishing now to be as free from her terrifying words as from the bite of her nails. 'And if you never love someone so much you miss them the rest of your days,' she said, 'that is the terrible thing.'"

Thomas's eyes never left his. The exposed place Silver had stumbled into -- well, too late to do anything about it, other than finish the story.

"She let go of me, as if commanded to do so by a force entirely separate from her. She stalked away at a speed that belied her age and decrepitude. I was left to stand there, panting, and where she had struck me minuscule beads of blood welled up, and by most estimates those scratches were the greater wounds. But I remember the way she said what she said; more than once I have regretted the precision of her proclamation, the utter truth of it.

"We are cursed by love, and blessed all the same, I suppose. I know no measure of escape that would not, in the end, be worse than not having loved in the first place -- though if you think I am not deeply bitter about this, you are as mad as that beldam was."

Thomas's mouth quirked; his gaze remained bright and steady. 

"Of course," Silver said, "it's entirely possible I'm full of shit."

"You stepped in front of a war to save Madi and James," Thomas pointed out. "Regardless of your methods, I believe your stance on loved ones is well established." He sounded engaged, heartened. "I happen to agree with it. And strange old women aside, well. You're right."

"I'm full of shit?"

Thomas cocked his head. "It is easier, in a way, to bear the terrible, knowing everyone else is doing so also."

He looked down and up, a fleeting shyness in his posture that Silver found himself yearning to see again. Thomas's fingers plucked at the hem of his shirt. Silver imagined those fingers reaching out-- As if Thomas could read his mind a splash of pink rose to Thomas's cheeks.

The door blew open with a crash. Both of them jumped in their chairs, turning in time to see Flint stomp inside.

"Fucking dreadful out there," he said, teeth chattering between syllables. He was muddy like he'd rolled down a hill.

"Don't move," Thomas commanded, already halfway to him. "I'll fetch a towel from our side." He yanked on his boots and bounced out the door, after giving Flint a kiss which Flint seemed to feel was far more brief than necessary.

Silver bit back a laugh. "What the hell happened to you?" He stood to take his crutch. 

"Horses," Flint intoned darkly.

"The townsfolk didn't tie you to four of them, did they?"

Flint growled and his teeth chattered some more.

Thomas returned fast as a rabbit, with a stack: towels, blankets, clothes. 

Flint looked at the armful and sighed. "Why don't I take a bath in our washtub?"

"Suit yourself," Thomas said. "Mr. Silver would no doubt appreciate your coming back to wipe up your puddles afterward." 

"Mr. Silver would appreciate no-one calling him Mr. Silver. I can manage the puddles, you two run along." Silver waved his hand as if to dismiss them.

Thomas hid another smile. "We'll bid you good night, then."

Flint followed him towards the door, looking back when he reached the threshold. "Everything all right?" he asked, low, as Silver came to close the door behind him. The flash of worry and heat in his eyes was unmistakable.

"We're fine," Silver said. 

"Yeah?" 

"Yeah." He wiped a smear of mud off Flint's jaw. "We'll talk tomorrow." Like that was a thing they did.

Flint looked at him, intent and serious for a second, before nodding.

~

It wasn't much of a surprise when Flint turned up a few hours later, just as Silver had burrowed under three blankets and a quilt.

"Thomas told me I had to bring back your scotch," Flint said, standing in the hallway by the bedroom. 

Silver tugged the quilt up higher. "Did you?"

"No." Flint came in to perch on the edge of the mattress and Silver could feel his eyes boring holes into his face.

When Silver opened his eyes Flint looked clean and apologetic, dressed for bed himself and barefoot.

"How in god's name did you create another puddle?" Thomas called from the kitchen.

Flint pursed his lips. "Thomas is here."

"What," Silver began. In a softer voice: "Did he ask you about Miranda?"

"Yes," Flint said. When he looked at Silver his eyes were dry, but there had been tears, earlier. He touched Silver's hair, as though willing himself to be distracted by the way it stuck to the pillow. "Would you mind if we slept in here tonight?"

He asked like it was a faintly ridiculous question, like he and Thomas were children seeking refuge from monsters beneath the bed; like Silver might say no.

"I don't mind," Silver said, reaching up to touch Flint's face for a moment.

Flint pressed into the touch, and pulled back the quilt. Silver let him wallow around until they were spooned up and Flint was smiling against the back of his neck. 

"Thomas, come to bed," Silver yelled, feeling Flint breathe out a laugh.

"It would have frozen into a patch of ice overnight," Thomas said, wandering into the room. "I cleaned it up; you're welcome."

"Thank you, Thomas," Flint said, sounding like an asshole who knew he was unconditionally adored.

"Oh, it's warm in here," Thomas said, sliding under the covers and facing Silver.

Silver opened his eyes long enough to see hesitancy. Thomas looked like he had possibly heard one story more than he bargained for since coming home. Silver inched forward and bumped his forehead against Thomas's shoulder gently. "On your other side," he whispered.

Thomas rolled over. Silver moved in behind him, with Thomas taking the initiative to scoot down a bit. Flint moved as well. Eventually everyone was tucked in, more evenly lined up; Silver felt hemmed in and less short and, yes, warmer.

"I'm just saying, one of us should buy a larger mattress someday," Flint said.

Thomas hummed. Silver wrapped a hand around one of his wrists. Flint yawned and pressed his knees into the backs of Silver's. The fire crackled. 

"Did you steal the apple?" Thomas asked, sounding almost asleep.

"What apple?" Silver was almost asleep himself.

"You mentioned an apple cart. And eating fruit. So I assumed."

"Oh." Silver thought about it. His childhood had been such a long time ago and while he could remember the old woman, any food in his belly was hazier. Still. "Yes. Probably."

"Good," Thomas said. His fingers threaded between Silver's. 

The quiet stretched out, like an unspooled bolt of silk.


End file.
